


And When It Screams It Whistles

by TheTartWitch



Category: Naruto
Genre: "Souls", 'physical' representation of souls, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark Iruka Umino, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-06-12
Packaged: 2018-07-14 13:00:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7172759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTartWitch/pseuds/TheTartWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There isn't really an exact age he can give, if asked when he first heard the Voice. The only definite is that it spoke right before the Fox's escape from its flesh-and-bone prison, whispering three words so quietly in the back of Iruka's head he thought he'd imagined them: Here. We. Go... with the kind of hushed finality that comes from waiting and waiting and waiting. That’s the day everything went wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And When It Screams It Whistles

There isn't really an exact age he can give, if asked when he first heard the Voice. The only definite is that it spoke right before the Fox's escape from its flesh-and-bone prison, whispering three words so quietly in the back of Iruka's head he thought he'd imagined them:  ** _Here. We. Go..._** with the kind of hushed finality that comes from waiting and waiting and waiting. That’s the day everything went wrong. 

The Fox killed many people that day, his parents included. And it turned out telling the first person he could find about the Voice, about how it predicted the village's downfall and knew exactly what had caused the Fox's release, wasn’t such a great idea after all. That man turned out to be Danzo, leader of something called Root, and while he thought Iruka's new Voice might be worth looking into further, he also thought itcouldbe a genjutsu and informed Iruka under no uncertain terms that until he figured out if it was a reclusive bloodline or a threat to the village, Iruka wasn't going anywhere.  

After that, well, there wasn't much cause or ability to do much. Predicting the future became something he just  _did_ , without thinking much about the skill.  

He's a fool to listen when Danzo promises him freedom, in the beginning. "The Hokage is uncertain if he can trust you, after this revelation," he says, apologetic and kind and so fucking  _patronizing_ and even at that age Iruka had had enough of that voice and those eyes as soon as he knew they existed. "He believes it to be in the village's best interest if you stay here fora while, and give us something to show we can trust you, something of a  _predicting_ nature." 

**_H_** ** _e's lying_** , says the Voice, and Iruka pauses in his pacing behind the bars of his cage and stares at Danzo, suddenly angry. "You're lying," he says, jabbing a finger at his jailer. "Does the Hokage even know I'm here? Or did you tell him I died with my parents?" 

Danzo stops smiling. His frown is even more aggravating than that pretend-fatherly look he'd sported earlier.  ** _He's not ever going to let go, you know_** , says the Voice, and Iruka pales. "Let me go. Let me  _go_."  

Danzo stands to leave. The earthen door makes a dull, heavy  _thum_ of a noise when it hits the wall. Iruka is alone, but for the Voice in the back of his head,droning  ** _how are you going to escape now? Should have thought of that before diving in and telling someone,_** ** _like you're already invincible..._**  

Iruka isn't sure what part of this situation is worse, but at least he's not truly alone in his cell. 

\--------------- 

 A period of time passes, in which the Voice says many things, all of which Iruka listens to and none of which Danzo is privy to. He's an adult now, as evidenced by changes to his body and urges these changes cause. The one guard he has, a smaller figure who draws pictures of Iruka with a scar across his nose and a high ponytail. Iruka isn't sure if that's actually what he looks like, but he knows his hair is much longer than depicted in the images.  

"I am Iruka and the Voice," he greets once, waving idly at the shadows surrounding his cell, where eyes have begun manifesting when the Voice takes interest in affairs outside Iruka's head. "Be my friend and speak to me, sit closer to me, and perhaps I'll give you something for Danzo." Because this boy is Danzo's spy, that much could not be clearer, but also because the Voice practically drools at the thought of getting in the boy's head, of taking root there, and Iruka is nothing if not accommodating.  

The boy sits still for a moment, his eyes and teeth gleaming in the reflected light of Iruka's lone lantern, before he smoothly slides over. Iruka can sense the exact moment the boy is within the Voice's range of shadows because it shrieks its joy and somehow he gets the feeling of a  ** _lunge_** , of a  ** _tackle_** and a  ** _fight_** and then the Voice is coming back to him, with big teeth and wide eyes and the happiest, loudest exclamation of  ** _LAUGHTER_** that he's ever heard from it. The boy is frozen, trembling, as though his mind is unable to understand why he can no longer move his own body. 

And in the corner of Iruka's mind, there is the faint feeling of something struggling. It is a cage, and in it, there is a copy of the boy in front of him, cold and angry and yanking at the bars. As he watches the body in front of his cell, he lets the boy see through his eyes the moment the Voice realizes that it's hungry and there's a fresh meal, sitting right there for the taking. 

**_Hello, Sai,_** says Iruka gleefully, as the Voice descends on the body and it vanishes. Sai sits quietly, staring through the window of Iruka's eyes at the stone wall where his body once was.  ** _It's okay if you're nervous; after all, we're going to have a long time to get to know each other._**  

\-------------- 

With the devouring of Sai's physical shell (because Iruka feels bored simply calling it 'the body'), the Voice gains the strength to extend to other shadows. The one in Danzo's room is its favorite, because it can watch the man sleep and pretend it's going to eat him, but it knows Iruka wouldn't be okay with keeping Danzo's consciousness alive in his head so it consents to fantasizing.  

There's a spot at the very entrance to the base that the Voice can get to if the door's open, and it often sees a singular shinobi passing by. The man is silver-haired, with a mask and a hitai-ate covering his face. The Voice chitters excitedly every time it sees the man, and every time the man stops and listens and tenses, and it makes Iruka flush when the Voice purrs a little in response, but the man never gets close enough for the Voice to be able to reach his shadow.  

Sai is an unwilling but generally cordial guest in Iruka's head. On good days he will sit and listen while Iruka talks. He doesn't speak much, preferring instead to draw with the paper and pens Iruka summons for him. It seems that while Sai is inside Iruka more often (it often feels as though the Voice merges them together when it goes on its escapades), Iruka is the only one able to bring objects here. The Voice is in charge of the people.  

Sai is terrified of the Voice. It curls around him like he is a beloved pet, shuddering and sighing in his ear, and every once in a while it throws in a delighted churring noise like a cicada. Iruka can't see its exact shape, but from what Sai tells him he pieces together a general image: a large beast, made of smoke and scales that shift between each other. A tail winds behind it, long and feathered, and in a patch of shadow shaded like an oil slick two obsidian eyes gleam. Every once in a while, when the Voice is hungry, teeth flash in the gloom like sharpened kunai.  

Danzo learned not to send guards down when all five of Sai's replacements met their ends feeding the Voice, leaving no trace but plenty of passerby screaming at the sudden sounds in their heads, no matter where they were in the building. The sound makes Iruka smile, and he notices how Sai doesn't look as disgruntled as he used to.  

\-------------- 

A few weeks later Iruka is shackled and escorted out of his cell by Danzo's closest guards. Iruka smirks at them and doesn't flinch when a growl winds around the dirt hollow. The one in charge scowls at him and doesn't show his unease.  

"Behave," he orders, and Iruka blows him a raspberry. Sai snorts in amusement at the look on his former fellow's face at that. The Voice croons to one of the guards in the corner, trying to figure out how tasty she would be, and the woman flinches in shock when the beast licks the back of her neck.  

Iruka is bustled through the building and out the front door, and he marvels silently at how the village has changed. Buildings once demolished stand strong, and children are laughing in the streets. Shinobi leap rooftops in a single bound and play-fight in the training grounds. It's surprisingly peaceful, for all the time Iruka has spent with Danzo prowling his cell like a dog snuffling after a bone.  

The Voice is interested in the village as well.  ** _How many do you think I could fit into my mouth in twenty minutes?_** It asks, and Iruka replies out loud to the rest of its questions out loud the whole trip, unnerving his escort.  

It turns out he's been summoned to Hokage Tower to stand before the Hokage and stand trial for his crimes against Konoha.  

The Hokage is an old man getting on in years. Sarutobi, once the great man Iruka looked up to, emulated, asks Iruka if he'd like to confess. The ANBU standing in the Voice's shadows loom judgmentally, probably already condemning him in their heads, and he sniggers.  

"Confess?" He asks, waiting for the Hokage's nod, and once he gets it he guffaws. "Confess to what? What crimes against the village could I have committed against the village while imprisoned under  _your_ orders, Hokage-sama?" He doesn't miss the widening of the old man's eyes, and leans forward to see it better. "Is this for eating Sai? Because I was lonely, and he was so easy to fool, once I promised to talk to him about the Voice, that I just couldn’t resist." In his head, Sai jabs at him with a pencil and rolls over to face the window of sight. The cage had disappeared sometime around the time his temper got better, and now he just lazed about like a lump.  

One of the ANBU steps forward at some invisible signal and unchains him. He giggles at the stiffness of the man's movements and asks, "What year is it?" As casually as he can.  

**_I_** ** _t was nineteen eighty-two, and the sun was falling under the horizon..._** The Voice offered, and Iruka glanced into its corner with an annoyed grimace. "Shut it, beast. Go bother Sai,he could use the attention." 

The ANBU frowns at him through the mask and turns to stare at the corner he'd snarked at. "What do you see?" They asked, sounding honestly curious. Iruka shrugged. 

"The Voice," he replied, and refused to say any more on the subject.  

\------------- 

"Well," said the old man, "I think you should stay with one of Konoha's jounin until we can figure out the situation and get you settled into a new living space. Does your family have an estate or somewhere we can begin?"  

"What are you going to do about Danzo?" Iruka asks softly, not willing to concede the matter until his jailer was dealt with. "Is he gone?" 

"Danzo died on the battlefield against someone who had suffered much for Danzo's crimes." Sarutobi replies, sounding like he's trying to gentle the news, but the Voice coos in excitement and Iruka shrugs.  

"He was a bad guy," he murmurs, and then offers, "could I have his body?" 

There's a moment of bewildered silence before Sarutobi demands, "to do what with?"He sounds half suspicious and half curious. Iruka smiles but doesn't answer. Sarutobi initiates a stare-down. 

Iruka's spent years staring down walls; Sarutobi is not going to win a match of endurance in this matter.  

But it wouldn't do to upset the man. After all, Konoha is Iruka's home until he can get to the woods and make a break for it. So Iruka shrugs and says, "The Voice wanted to eat him for a long time, Hokage-sama, and I thought it'd be best to reward it for holding off so long, that’s all." He pauses, waiting, but Sarutobi doesn't respond. "It's okay, I guess, if you don’t want to give him to it; it'll just find him anyway."  

And then he's being handed off to a jounin and quickly escorted from the room.  

\----------- 

 He's not surprised at the guard they put on his tail, but he's not sure if they're meant to protect him or everyone else. For the first day of his 'freedom', the jounin, named Kakashi, shows him around the tiny apartment they’ll be sharing for a few weeks and then takes him out to lunch. They eat sandwiches, and if Kakashi notices how the pickles on Iruka's plate disappear without him ever touching them he doesn’t say anything.  

Afterwards, however, he does bring up the Voice. 

"What does it look like?" Kakashi asks, sounding merely curious, but Iruka's been interrogated by Danzo's men and it shows. He's not cowed.  

"It's dark," is all he says, and he doesn’t mention how it cuddles up to Sai after it's just eaten, or how when Sai pets it the noises it makes resemble the fox's deep laugh. He doesn't even think about it.  

But that night, when Kakashi is pretending to have gone to bed and Iruka is pretending not to be out of his room, Iruka lets Sai out of his head to sit like a ghost on the living room table and draw a picture of the Voice, curled as it is on its side by the boy. When Sai returns to his head, Iruka grabs the image of the drawing in his mind and brings it forward to his hand, where he then lets it drop to the wood. He knows Kakashi will have been watching, and he enters his room and waits until he hears the Voice's satisfied chatter before falling asleep.  

\------------ 

The second day is a bit more interesting. There's an explosion in the market as Iruka and Kakashi are passing through, someone shouting ' _bang!_ ' And then unleashing a plume of orange smoke. Kakashi casually puts himself between Iruka and the slight figure of a boy, and Iruka feels a flash of nostalgia for the days when jounin chased  _him_ across rooftops and dodged his sticky traps.  

There's a sudden silence in the square around them, but Iruka's not really listening as he watches the boy. His fingers curl into the ruff of the Voice, stationary by his side, as he steps calmly around Kakashi and gazes down at the indignantly defiant expression of Konoha's newest prankster.  

"Hello," he says politely, and grins wolfishly when the Voice churrs quietly. The little boy's eyes widen and he stumbles back a half-step. "My name is Umino Iruka, and this is the Voice. It's nice to meet you, little beast," and he doesn't flinch from the boy's wondering eyes.  

"You have one too," says the boy, voice quiet, and the ANBU in the square burst into motion, surrounding them both and escorting them away. Kakashi's mouth is grim, when Iruka looks, and the boy doesn’t look so brave anymore. "Where are we going, Umino-san?" 

Iruka doesn’t know himself, but it promises to be interesting, if the shadow of a fox's tail winding around the boy's shoulders is anything to go by. 

\-------------- 

Sarutobi is not pleased.  

"The Voice is a demon, and you didn’t feel the need to let me know, Umino-kun?" He asks, disappointed and angry and so, so upset. Iruka just smiles.  

"Do you regularly make demons register themselves, Sarutobi? And I'm not talking about the Kyuubi, because that’s not what I saw in this boy." Kakashi leans over Iruka's shoulder just the barest amount. "I saw another Voice, sitting on his shoulder and whispering in his ear."  

Sarutobi turns pale. Kakashi doesn’t move. It's not hard to imagine him frozen in shock, which would be minimally entertaining, but Iruka's more interested in the boy now. 

"That black fog; that one's yours?" Naruto, the boy, jabbers excitedly. "I've never seen another one before!" 

The Voice shifts at Iruka's side, warbling at the smaller Thing perched on the back of Naruto's chair.  

"What do you call it?" Iruka asks, curious. "Does it speak to you? Does it do" he pauses to glance at Sarutobi thoughtfully " _things_?" 

**_Y_** ** _our human is a whiny brat_** says the Thing, just as Naruto mumbles, "It calls itself 'Words', and I don’t know if it's a boy or a girl." 

Iruka nods; compared to his, its intelligence level is remarkable, but he supposed some of the Kyuubi might be leaking in to color Words' personality with flavor. "I don’t know that about mine either, but some people and Things are like that. They are just... neither. Mine is called the Voice." 

Naruto nods cautiously, head tilting as he remembers that, before he says, "What did you mean, 'things'? Like a power?" 

In response, a flickering image of Sai appears standing beside Iruka and the Voice. He waves at Naruto and bows to Sarutobi, who sits very still, gaping.  

"Hokage-sama," Sai says respectfully.  

"What is that?" Naruto asks, eyeing the already-stabilizing image of his would-be yearmate with trepidition. "Are you a ghost?" He asked, innocently confused. 

Sai frowned thoughtfully. "In some capacity, yes...?" 

Kakashi groaned. 

\------------ 

It turns out there's a whole village of shinobi with Things. In fact, as Iruka looks around, even Kakashi and Sarutobi have Things, small and muted as they are. Sarutobi insists on knowing every shinobi in the village who doesn’t have a tiny, weak Thing beside them, whether it's a full-size healthy one or none at all. Naruto has latched onto Iruka's arm like he doesn’t plan on letting go, so Kakashi takes the lead and they traipse around the village.  

Iruka immediately nominates Gai for the list. His Thing isn't very big, around the size of a small monkey, with big, grasping hands and tiny feet. Its body was fluffy wool, like a sheep, and its head sported a rather large pair of ram's curling horns. It wasn’t in the least faded or muted, like it was being seen through a cloudy filter or a hazy liquid, but rather, some violent shade of magenta. Next to that, Gai's preposterous jumpsuit suddenly didn’t seem so bad. Sai drew Kakashi a picture of the Thing while Iruka and Naruto went to go talk to Gai.  

"Hey, hey," Naruto wiggled and tugged at Gai's arm. The man grinned and swung him around for a bit, turning to Iruka with the widest smile he'd ever seen.  

"AND WHO MIGHT YOU BE?" The loud man shouted. It was odd; the sound was booming, but the man's mouth hardly moved at all. Maybe it was a jounin thing.  

Iruka pointed at the Thing on Gai's shoulder. "What's that?" He said instead of replying. Gai looked confused. 

"WHAT? WHAT IS WHAT?" He glanced around. "THERE IS NOTHING THERE." 

\--------------


End file.
